What Principles Should Liberals Hold?
Scattered musings on Graham Platner's sexts, AOC's headscarf, Hasan Piker's UK ban, and the criminal fanatics at the Israel Day parade.
“Graham Platner during an interview with Lauren Egan” by The Bulwark, CC BY-NC 4.0
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal broke the story that the presumptive Democratic nominee for a Maine senate seat, Graham Platner, had sent sexually explicit texts to a half-dozen women on the app Kik early in his marriage. Platner and his wife married in 2023, so “early in their marriage” means very recently.
This may not have been much of a scandal, except that Platner is a largely unknown quantity, and his campaign has been hit again and again by stories that show, at the very least, a real lack of judgment: A tattoo he got while in the marines that he says he thought was just a skull and crossbones but turned out to be a totenkopf, strongly associated with Nazis and the SS; Reddit posts that said rape victims should “take some responsibility,” that political violence may be necessary, and that included crude musings on Latin American hookers; working for Blackwater; and so on. Platner’s defense against the earlier scandals was that he was young and foolish, and that he was a combat veteran with PTSD; he worked hard to come through many tough years, and had emerged a different man.
The sexting scandal is landing in part because it suggests his redemption arc hasn’t quite bent toward its end — “I’m a changed man” is a harder case to make when you were behaving quite badly just two years ago. It makes voters nervous about what might drop next. And after the John Fetterman fiasco, many Democrats are understandably skittish about untested populist candidates with complex mental health histories who take on the trappings of the white working class but who may wind up being extremely loose cannons. And so this story, which by itself would probably not be much of a story, is a story.
It’s also turning into a bizarro gotcha for Republicans and even some moderates, who claim that voting for Platner despite these scandals is hypocrisy — that deciding Democratic power is more important than decency is the same calculus Republicans make when voting for people like Ken Paxton in Texas or Donald Trump. And I think they have a theoretical point: It would indeed be bad if Democrats put party before country or power before decency. But is that what’s happening here?
The Platner story is a good moment to clarify what, exactly, liberal and / or leftist values should be when it comes to electing flawed human beings. We can think that some behavior is personally offensive without it being electorally disqualifying, and that’s where I put the sexting scandal. Do I like it? No. Do I think it shows a lack of judgment? Yes. In an election where there are only two real choices, do the concerns about a lack of judgment outweigh the concerns about a politician who often backs Trump’s agenda and voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh (talk about a lack of judgment!)? For me, no.
There are and should be lines. Those include things like committing crimes. Corruption. Multiple credible allegations of sexual assault or harassment. Abuse of power.
I can hear the critics: “Uh, what about ‘Nazi tattoo’?” And, yeah — Nazi tattoo should be on that list. But I do think we can take context and common sense into account. I’ll be honest, if I had seen Platner’s tattoo in the wild, I would not have thought “Nazi tattoo.” I would have thought “skull and crossbones.” I can absolutely see how a marine on shore leave would have wound up with a tattoo that has connotations the vast majority of Americans do not understand. I agree he should have gotten it removed sooner. But I do not actually believe that Platner is a secret Nazi.
If you do believe Platner is a secret Nazi (or, I think more commonly, that he’s an antisemite and an avatar for the rise of dangerous antisemitism on the left), then I can see why you wouldn’t vote for Platner. There are people who sincerely believe this, and surely think I am either pitifully naive or dangerously stupid for giving him the benefit of the doubt on this one. I can respect that difference and that moral line-drawing. I think it represents a genuine difference of interpretation of the facts, not a difference in fundamental morality.
This is not a defense of Graham Platner, who I frankly don’t care to defend, even if I would in fact vote for him were I a Maine resident. I also get Fetterman vibes from him; I am eternally skeptical of men who spend much of their lives screwing around and then one day wake up and decide they should hold one of the most powerful positions in the country. I don’t trust them. I don’t think they tend to be very effective leaders, because they don’t tend to be particularly conscientious, prudent, or willing to work behind the scenes and build relationships in order to get things done. I do not think Graham Platner exemplifies the best of what America has to offer. I have my concerns, in other words. I think there are some very valuable lessons for Democrats to learn here.
But again, binary choice. And my question is which core values voting for Platner would violate. Which standards are we implementing here, and are we comfortable applying those to all Democratic candidates going forward? I’m perfectly comfortable with the “no sexual harassers / no sexual assailants / no corrupt criminals” standard. I am less so with a standard that holds consensual sexting should end a campaign.
Liberal, moderate, and leftist standards are being tested elsewhere this week, too. Yesterday the news broke that leftist streamer Hasan Piker and Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur were banned from the UK, where both had been set to speak, “on the grounds that their presence in the U.K. may not be conducive to the public good.” The ban, according to the government, was “based solely on an assessment of the potential risk an individual may pose to U.K. society.” Piker and Uygur both say that the ban is based on their anti-Israel comments, which many critics say have veered into the anti-Semitic.
